I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to electronics, and more specifically to an inductor for an integrated circuit (IC) or a printed circuit board (PCB).
II. Background
With modern advances in IC process technology, it is possible to fabricate radio frequency ICs (RFICs) for various applications such as wireless communication, networking, computing, etc. These RFICs may include analog circuit blocks that were previously implemented with bulky discrete circuit components. By implementing the analog circuit blocks on RFICs, certain benefits such as smaller size, lower cost, and improved reliability may be realized.
Many analog circuit blocks utilize inductors to perform the desired functions and/or achieve the desired performance. For example, filters, resonator tank circuits, and impedance matching networks may include inductors to obtain the desired circuit response. For some applications, such as a resonator tank circuit for a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), an inductor with high quality factor (Q) is desirable in order to obtain good performance for the VCO. However, it may be difficult to obtain high Q due to various types of losses as described below. This may be especially true at high frequencies used by many wireless communication systems.